By Gustavo Capdevila
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 27 2005 (IPS)

The multilateral trading system has now entered the final stage on the road to the 6th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), set to take place in December in Hong Kong, yet its path seems strewn with distractions, drawing attention away from the main objective: a Doha Round agreement.

The discussions on trade held at the World Economic Forum (WEF), currently underway in the Swiss alpine resort of Davos, reveal that there are many who place greater emphasis on side issues. What’s more, some of these issues, like the idea of a WTO social clause, were supposed to have been dealt with long ago.

Until now, in fact, the only WEF speaker who has focused on the evolution of the Doha Round negotiations is the outgoing director general of the WTO, Supachai Panitchpakdi, whose term expires in September.

It is his hope that the current round of negotiations, initiated in Doha, Qatar in December 2001, will culminate in an agreement by 2006, and he has been pressuring the WTO’s 148 members states to meet this goal.

The Doha Round has been plagued by a series of setbacks and delays, largely due to disagreements on agricultural trade.

For the moment, said Supachai, when the WTO Trade Negotiating Committee – which oversees the progress of negotiations – meets for the first time this year on Feb. 14, “I hope that by that time people will courageously say what they intend to achieve by the 6th Ministerial Conference in December.”

Nevertheless, he warned, “If the members would like to achieve modalities on agriculture, for example, we need to be able to achieve progress on a broad front, because in order to convince people to deliver on agriculture, we need to move much better on manufactured goods, we need to double our efforts in the area of services, we need to move in the area of rules, particularly in trade remedies.”

As a result, he hopes that at least some “approximation of modalities” can be achieved by mid-year, “before the summer vacation in Europe.”

“We haven’t seen any figures in agriculture yet, so I’m trying to put pressure on those involved in the negotiations,” he said. “Before the summer we need to at least see some ranges of figures.”

In the meantime, others involved in the negotiations have been distracted by secondary matters, such as a report on “The Future of the WTO” prepared by a consultative board set up by Supachai and chaired by Peter Sutherland, a former WTO director-general.

The Sutherland Report, as it is known, recommends a return to the basic principles of neoliberalism that reigned supreme a decade ago, when the WTO was first established.

The report proposes strengthening the role of the WTO Secretariat, increasing both funding and power, but with consideration by the member states.

Another focus of the report criticises the regional, bilateral and preferential trade agreements that have proliferated in recent years, saying these treaties undermine the liberalisation efforts of the multilateral trade system.

In a debate at the Davos Forum Thursday, Chile’s Foreign Minister Ignacio Walker stood up in the audience to refute Sutherland’s argument and defend bilateral and regional trade accords.

Although Chilean trade negotiators have long been considered the champions of neoliberalism, Walker maintained that regional agreements do not necessarily contradict the multilateral system that the WTO aims to protect.

Chile has signed numerous agreements of this type, which around the world already encompass at least 1.3 billion people, he said.

The only voice resoundingly critical of the WTO heard in the Davos debates so far has been that of Neil Kearney, secretary-general of the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers Federation.

The trade unionist pointed to the negative effects that the finalisation of textile trade agreements, in late 2004, has had on the jobs of millions of workers in the developing South.

Kearney said that to prevent such impacts, the WTO must incorporate “the social dimension” into world trade. The idea, known for the past decade as “the social clause”, aims to make the measurements of market liberalisation success based on more just labour and social policies.

But the initiative, promoted by European countries and the United States, was shelved due to the overwhelming rejection of developing countries, which feared having to confront a new form of market protection on the part of the rich countries.

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